My Half Acre of Paradise

Hey, hey, my friends! My nectarines are ripe now! Been sampling some over the past several days, and it now looks like harvest time has come! Come and get ‘em! We don’t can them, so we really do like to share with friends. We’ll eat a big bowl full, make a cobbler or something, and that’s about it. I’m inviting friends to come over on Thursday evening this week to pick your own. Let me know if you’re coming.

Also, I just wanted to show how enormous those Hibiscus moscheutos flowers really are. Here’s a photo with my hand in it to give some perspective:

Early Saturday morning, before dawn, our Lacebark Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) suffered a major break from some heavy wind. We’ve had wind like this many times, but there was a weak crotch where two major scaffold branches were growing in too deep of a V-shape. When branches grow with narrow crotch angles, they end up with “included bark” which means a line of bark is sandwiched betwen the branches as they grow thicker and thicker. This line prevents the two branches from being knitted together, and it creates a major weakness that someday can turn into this kind of break. It’s heartbreaking to have this happen to a tree we’ve loved so much. It will survive, but I’m not sure if the remaining branch is strong enough where the break is to continue supporting all the growth on that side of the tree. We might end up with another break and another major section of the tree missing.

On a brighter note, check out these beautiful Hibiscus moscheutos blooms. These plants are in large pots on my deck, and they make a great accent there.

My nectarines are almost ripe! I actually picked one yesterday and ate it today, but it was still just a bit green. They should all be ripe in a week or so. Tasted good, even though it wasn’t completely ripe! I’ll also throw in a shot of our second veggie garden on the side of our basement walkout. Those zucchini plants sure are getting huge! And finally, here’s a closeup of some Caryopteris shrub blooms. It’s nice having some things that bloom late in the season like these. They add new life to the garden at the end of summer.

Lots of things to share, and I think I’ll just use the photos as my guide:

My Clematis ‘Ville de Lyon’ is beginning its bloom season now. It will hit its peak probably a week from now, and I’ll post another photo later. I’m having a little trouble with the clematis, because after this time of year, the trees by it are leafed out and start to give it too much shade. I don’t know if it can handle transplanting, but I don’t have another great place to put it anyway.

First roses of the season. This is some unknown variety of floribunda rose — it was supposed to be ‘Pink Simplicity,’ and it’s in the middle of a long hedge of ‘Pink Simplicity’ roses. But it turns out to be a case of mistaken identity by the nursery, and it flowers earlier than the rest of the hedge. One day, I need to move it and replace it with the right rose, but I keep debating whether to replace all the simplicities with something else. Oh well, not this year.

These are ‘Lapins’ cherries. I have two trees, and this one is acting a little funny this year. A lot of fruit has fallen off of it in the past two weeks, but I read online that this is common with many cherries, because they set much more fruit than they can really bear. But now, on this tree, many of the cherries are turning red too soon. They usually ripen around the Fourth of July. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’ll try eating them when they ripen and see if they taste normal. The other tree’s cherries are still all green, with just a few getting a hint of blush. I’ll keep you posted on what happens. I sprayed the cherry trees last Saturday with malathion, and I also hit the apple trees and the trunk of the nectarine (to kill/repel any borers that might be lurking).

This is my favorite place in the garden for rest and meditation, although I certainly don’t do enough of that. I like how the shrubs are growing through the benches and it’s getting that wild, natural look. But still, I might have to trim back those shrubs (they’re Alpine Currants), because my wife likes things neater. And the branches may get damaged when we sit there, anyway.

My Jonathan (left) and Granny Smith (right) apples are developing well, I think. I was supposed to pick off at least half the blossoms this year to try to force it back to annual blooming and bearing. But I was busy and late, so I just went out on Saturday and snipped off a bunch of the little fruit, hoping that saves some of the trees’ energy to promote next year’s blossoms. I hope I wasn’t too late. There were a lot of little apples that fell off just when I touched them, so they wereready to abort much of the fruit anyway. I hope they bloom and bear next year! I LIVE for apple pie from my own apples in the fall!

I got my 10 tomatoes all caged on the weekend. Those wild things!

Going clockwise: The salvias are beginning their bloom now. This is the ‘East Friesland’ variety. My ‘Nearly Wild’ rose is also just starting its bloom. These shrubs are kinda cool together, with the fine texture of the ‘Antony Waterer’ Spirea in the foreground and the lighter-colored, bigger-leaved Golden Vicary Privets behind them. My plain green Japanese Maple is getting quite graceful. I hope it doesn’t get verticilium wilt like my red one in the front of my house is getting. I should post a photo of the red one. I had to prune out a lot of dead wood last week, but it’s still acceptable. Next, the bees are all over the raspberries these days. You can just sit there, close your eyes, and marvel at all the buzzing you hear. I’m looking forward to those berries on vanilla ice cream in about three weeks! Finally, just a shot of the lower part of my backyard. I’m still loving that arbor. Going to plant two grapes (Himrod — I have them in pots on the deck) to grow on it this year, but I worry a little that the one of the north side may not get enough sun. When it grows tall enough to be on top of the arbor it’ll be fine, so I hope it grows fast.

That’s enough for now. Happy gardening to you!

OK, well I’ve been a bit slow to get into the groove this spring, mostly because I’ve been working hard to finish my basement construction, and now I’m almost done. Carpet goes in this week, and I should now have much more time for gardening. What a relief! I’ve been working on that basement project for about 14 months, trying to do most of it myself.

I’m going to catch up on several weeks of photos in this post. I’ll start with our big April 15 snow storm — I took these shots the next morning. It was huge! Some areas near us got 13 inches, while we got around four on the ground. In some of those communities, a lot of tree branches broke from the weight of all the snow. You can see in the one photo below how my birch tree was arching heavily from the snow.

One bummer in my backyard: one of my last two alpine firs (sometimes called subalpine fir) is dying. There’s really nothing I can do to save it now, I think. Larry Sagers (who was my master gardener teacher) says it’s showing the stress of something done wrong last year. He said it’s likely that I didn’t give it enough water last year, since these trees live at high altitudes in moist conditions. It probably got too dry last fall, and that doomed it. I do recall reading the advice that evergreens should be well-watered in the fall before it freezes, and I really should have taken that advice. You can also see that it was misshapen, because deer ate all the lower branches when it was younger.

So, here’s something amazing — one week after that big snow storm, the tulip festival started at Thanksgiving Point. I’m a volunteer there now and then, working to get my 40 hours of service done to earn my master gardener title. On that first day, only 30% of the tulips were in bloom, but then our master gardener class went for a tour on Thursday the 24th, and it was more than 60% in bloom. Here are some photos from that day.

A few of those shots are from the “Secret Garden” at Thanksgiving Point, which is really cool. I like the brick walls with Boston ivy growing on them, the wooden gates/doors, the arches with honeysuckle and climbing roses growing over them, and the cool, old-fashioned flowering quince shrub (with the salmon-red blooms above). That shot with all the people is our master gardener class (or most of us), with Karen Ashton, the founder of Thanksgiving Point Gardens, providing the guided tour. Karen was part of our class last fall, and it was fun to hear her personal insights on the gardens and stories about how they were developed.

The tulip festival is over, but I’d bet if you go to the gardens this week, you’ll still see incredible flowerbeds, about 80% in bloom (it was 90% last Thursday). It’s worth it to go see!

Now, onto my garden and what’s blooming this week. My Granny Smith apple (below) is blooming very well this year. I also have a Jonathan apple and it’s a little slower but starting to bloom, too. You may recall that I had no blossoms on these last year. The advice from Larry Sagers was to pluck off about half of the blossoms now, so the tree doesn’t spend too much energy producing fruit and has enough energy to start producing the microscopic beginnings of next year’s flower buds. I’m supposed to do this blossom thinning for two years and then it should be back to normal. I need to get out and do that this week.

Here are a few more things in bloom right now.

Starting from the top left, those are:
1st row: close shot of Kwanzan Cherry tree blossoms (ornamental tree), Vinca minor groundcover, and blossoms forming on leatherleaf Viburnum.
2nd row: Candytuft (Iberis) groundcover, a close-ish shot of flowering cherry (or sand cherry) shrubs, and Rockcress or Arabis.
3rd row: close shot of Prairiefire Crabapple blossoms (just starting to open this week), some Iceland poppies, and some hyacinths (man, they smell great!) with tulips. I planted the hyacinths by my front walkway to give that pleasant aroma as you approach the house.

And now, one final photo. This is Brunera, or Siberian Bugloss (don’t ask about the name - I have no idea what “bugloss” is supposed to mean!). It’s also called false forget-me-not or perennial forget-me-not:

Here’s another followup to my posting on GardenWeb about caring for Japanese maple seedlings. I think I’ll try this. I already had the same idea with two other young trees last summer — I took a seedling from my Autumn Blaze maple and a Golden Rain Tree seedling and put them in a shaded corner of my veggie garden area. They like it better than the pots. I also put two Clematis seedlings in the bed, but kept them in the small pots, buried up to the rim. I hope those little guys are surviving the winter OK, because I didn’t pile any mulch on them. Anyway, here’s the reply from GW:

I transplant my JM seedlings outside in early to mid-summer in a nursery bed, placing the seedlings about 6″ apart. In late fall, I mulch the bed heavily with oak leaves (several inches) which I hold down with plastic netting, and uncover them in early April the following spring. Depending on their parentage, I get anywhere from 50-90% survival. I live in zone 4 Minnesota so am pretty happy even with a 50% rate. I transplant the survivors later on that year if they are 1′ or more in height, those that are shorter get mulched for a second winter and then are transplanted to their permanent location the following spring/summer.

I asked a few followup questions and got this reply:

I water them in with a low dose of water-soluble fertilizer or fish emulsion when I plant them. I don’t feed them after that as I don’t want to encourage too much growth later in the season that won’t have any chance of hardening off.

Rainfall is usually pretty regular here so I water them only if there is extreme drought. As long as there is no leaf scorch or drop, I leave them alone. I think it results in less but stronger growth.

I don’t root prune my JMs. I try to move them during a cloudy day—just before a rain if possible. If I can’t wait for that, I water them a couple of hours before I move them–it seems to help the soil stay on the root ball better.

I am a big fan of nursery beds–it makes tending young plants easier (they are all together, can be mulched, watered, fed, protected from critters), and it is easy to compare the characteristics and growth rate of the seedlings.